“Video Blogging” is a book that gives practical and detailed instructions about developing a video-based blog, appropriate for both beginning and experienced video bloggers.

Video Podcasting, Vlogging, Vidcasting, Vodcasting, and What it All Means…

“Video Blogging” opens with a detailed introduction that breaks down the mindset of what videoblogging is all about, and why someone would do this. Reasons are numerous: connecting with family and friends, promoting business, sharing homemade movies and shows, etc.

In the recent past, video distribution could only be done locally, such as by television stations, network cable or Hollywood films. Now with internet and high-speed connections, video can be freely (and easily) shared and distributed globally via video blogging.

While reading through this I found the text to be very open in style, that someone new to the process, as well as someone with experience and background in videoblogging, could equally benefit from this material.

Video Blog Preproduction

The first section of the book delves into the big picture of what video blogging is all about, and gives some samples of videoblog directories. What I like about this book is the inclusion of sample interviews with successful video bloggers in the industry, as well as plenty of screenshots of current video blogs.

The text addresses the phenomena of “viral videos”, or those lucky folks who win the lottery with their video and have it distributed around the world to hundreds of thousands of folks (Could be a good thing, and could also be colossally embarrassing, depending on the content of the video.)

Cameras and Blog Creation

Following the introduction, the text then offers a guide to selecting Webcams to use, in terms of quality and price. Helpful tips on video lighting, editing, and computer specifications are also included.

Also covered are detailed steps on starting a free web blog, including helpful screenprints of the steps to create a blog. Personally speaking, when I read through a techy book, screenshots are very valuable in conjunction with following setup steps and the book provides plenty through each section.

Production Tips and Advice

The Production section of the book offers a wealth of good tips on capturing video, working with digital stills, slow-motion, and even gives detailed steps about capturing mobile video footage. Pages 54-62 even gives technically detailed Perl code samples for parsing an email message to receive text, images, audio and video from it.

Chapter 5 covers some of the details of “screencasting”, or capturing a computer screen while it’s being used (such as for demonstrations of new software or computer games) and identifies helpful PC and Mac software that can be used for this.

Post-Production of Video for Blogs

“Video Blogging” includes an extensive section devoted to post-production details, and identifies software that can be used for editing audio and video.

Also included in this section of the book are steps detailing how to add titles and captions, and concluded with some helpful guides regarding transcoding and compression, namely converting the video format to different formats when needed. The software examples were especially helpful to me personally, since video conversion is something I’ve been working on currently with some of my films.

Distributing Your Films Online

A Comprehensive section follows that discusses distribution of films, starting with an overview of free hosting options, and includes a detailed guide to setting up Wordpress. I’ve worked with WP and know first-hand that it can be a beast to configure, so the detailed steps offered here are very valuable.

Following this the section also discusses topics such as distribution of videos with programs such as BitTorrent and Prodigem, then features an overview and description of what RSS is, followed by descriptions of free RSS2 services like FeedBurner.

Finding Videoblogs to Watch

Part V of the text breaks down ways to find and subscribe to videoblogs, and offers an analysis of sites like Mefeedia, VlogDir and Gmail, that can be used for this purpose.

This section of text also gives a handy overview of how to watch videos on your television, including setup tips (with plenty of helpful images, too.) Next are steps to customize your videoblog, all with an impressive level of granular detail.

“Pimping” Your Vlog

The final section of “Videoblogging” offers you some steps in terms of tagging your videos to make them stand out, how to let people know about your feed, tracking your video statistics and how to make money from your films (via means of Paypal and Adsense).

As a final thought, I was impressed by the comprehensive material covered in the text, and I think this stands out as an excellent guide for anyone who’s either interested in getting started with video blogging or who has been at it for awhile and needs quality video blogging reference material.

Online Reviews and Feedback About Video Blogging

The reviews I’ve seen of this book have been generally favorable. Amazon had a number of reviews, mostly positive, identifying that the book offers practical and valuable information for all experience levels.

Barnes & Nobles offered a favorable editorial review, noting how the text will offer guidance for everything from pre-production to promotion. A reviewer also noted that while there are some sections that might not apply to everyone, the book serves as a good video blogging reference guide.

Video Blogging – Prices, Deals and Discounts

• On Amazon:
  Available to buy at Amazon
• On eBay:

  Video Blogging ExtremeTech Jay Dedman Joshua Paul US $5.77   Auction Ends: 2d 10h 56m Make it yours…

  Videoblogging US $8.99   Auction Ends: 6d 6h 56m Make it yours…

You Might Also Be Interested In

• The Easy Guide to Web Video, Instructional DVD Guide
• More Books on Online Video
• Video Blogging Books on Ebay

Boxee

Boxee is a free, open-source piece of software that allows PC users to access all their Web video from one central location. On top of this, it operates as a cross-platform media center that allows online video lovers to watch their favorite content on their televisions rather than their computers.

Boxee is still a work in progress but has become increasingly popular amongst people who want one solution that will enable them to watch a number of sources using one application. Mac and Linux versions of the software are now in open alpha, while a new Windows version is in closed beta.

Boxee offers a range of different content sources, from Apple movie trailers, YouTube, Blip.tv, CNN, CBS, MySpaceTV, Netflix, Revision3, MTV, Joost, and the BBC iPlayer. And until the middle of February, Hulu was also on that list.

Hulu Pulls Out

On February 19, Hulu announced its content would be disappearing from Boxee. This came just a day after Hulu content was also removed from TV.com. The reason for the move soon became clear – the cable companies weren’t happy with premium content they were paying dividends for being available on televisions via an alternative and completely free means.

At first, Boxee accepted this. After all, what else could it do in the face of the NBC and News Corps. owned site? Plenty, or so it appears. Boxee don’t seem to be going down without a fight.

RSS Workaround

On Friday morning, Boxee announced a workaround to the Hulu issue. By introducing a new built-in RSS reader optimized for video, Boxee at a stroke allowed its users to access Hulu, only this time it was via Hulu’s public RSS feeds. Simple, yet utterly effective. For a day at least.

By the end of Friday, Hulu had plugged the hole, blocking the boxee browser from accessing the Hulu site. This was also a simple, yet also utterly effective move, although a lot more underhanded. Only the Boxee browser was blocked while the likes of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, and Opera were still allowed access.

But the story didn’t end there. On Saturday morning, Boxee once again claimed to have made access to Hulu possible via the Boxee app. No doubt Hulu will respond in kind and the cat and mouse game will continue ad nauseam.

Set To Run and Run?

Most people, me included, are on Boxee’s side here because Hulu’s actions seem to be borne out of nothing but spite. Hulu is a site that’s meant to be accessible by every U.S. citizen, but suddenly Boxee users aren’t good enough.

Also, RSS feeds are there purely to allow anyone to access content using whatever tool they want to. But in the case of Hulu, that clearly doesn’t extend to Boxee.

I predict this story will run and run but there can surely only be one loser – viewers who want to access their content in any way they see fit. Hulu, likely under intense pressure from content providers, clearly doesn’t want that to happen.

Fliggo Opens Its Doors

Fliggo is a new start-up that has been in private beta for a while, but is now open to the great unwashed or you and I. In a nutshell, it allows anyone to create their own video-sharing site, be it a YouTube clone, a blog, or a private place to share.

Fliggo tries to make the whole process of creating and running a video-sharing site as easy as humanly possible, and it manages to do exactly that. All of the technical side is done for you with a set of easy-to-use management tools enabling some degree of customization.

Options, Options, Options

The site you create using Fliggo can be private or public, and cater to your own personal whims. Are you a group of people which wants to share videos amongst yourself? Are you a company that wants an easy way of sharing videos with its employees? Are you an individual who wants to run a video blog but lacks the necessary resources and technical know-how? Fliggo caters to all of these needs and more besides.

Of course, there is the question of whether it’s really all that smart to create your own YouTube when the real YouTube seems to be doing quite alright. Certainly, you can simply create a Wordpress blog and embed YouTube videos on it, but those videos will not only all also appear on YouTube as well as your own site, any advertising revenue obtained from them would be split with YouTube.

Free or Premium?

Fliggo offers its basic service for free. That level allows you to create a site, and upload videos which are then hosted and streamed by the company. You can choose any domain name not already taken, although it will be followed by fliggo.com. You can also change the appearance, color scheme, and theme of your new site.

If you want premium features such as the ability to serve adverts or host the site on your own domain, Fliggo charges a small fee. But this is worth it for the amount of hassle you have removed from the process of running a video-sharing site on your own.

There are currently no HD options although they are promised for the future, and the service does need tweaking around the edges. But all in all, Fliggo is a very capable and easy-to-use application.

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So, to that end, Seesmic, a video micro-blogging application for the Web, is now available as a Wordpress plugin, which will instantly make it available to millions of new users.

What the new Seesmic plugin offers is the chance for bloggers and writers on websites to easily record videos for their posts, as well as the opportunity for readers to comment using video rather than text.

Seesmic Founder Talks

Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic said:

”We warmly welcome Wordpress users to the Seesmic community. With over 70 million blogs worldwide, there is always a need for bloggers to differentiate themselves, and to engage their audience in different ways.”

“Seesmic enables people to engage in video conversations, straight from their webcams, and now also straight from their blogs. Now, most bloggers can create and participate in live video conversations directly with their readers.”

Viddler Got There First

It’s not the first company to offer such a service though, as Viddler released a similar plugin earlier this year which does almost exactly the same thing.

I’m all for the ability of bloggers to be able to easily and conveniently use video in posts, as that could massively help create a conversation, and improve the flow of debate. Video comments though are a slightly more complicated issue.

Making Life Easier For Bloggers

For bloggers, this makes the process much easier, as they will no longer need to record and upload a video to a site such as YouTube, and then go through the rigmarole of embedding it within a post.

Instead, by simply using a few options from within Wordpress, they will be able record a video, and post it as simply as writing a paragraph of text.

To Allow Or Not?

Commenters go through almost exactly the same process, but whether to enable them to do so isn’t so clear cut.

Mainly because when moderating comments, you’ll then have to watch videos to check for spam/inappropriate content. This is much more time consuming than scanning a paragraph or two of text.

Not a problem on small blogs, or websites with a low readership, but when you come to sites such as Techcrunch, who have already enabled the plugin, that means someone will have the job of watching potentially hundreds of videos.

Moderation Problem

It’s nice to see video getting a foothold on another rung of the Internet, but in terms of usability, it may prove hard to keep up with in the long term.

You can download the plugin from here, and I’d recommend experimenting with it by all means. It’s very useful, and could revolutionise blog commenting, but not until a better system of moderating the videos is introduced.

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This is a new video-based advertising format that matches the breadth of consumable video content of YouTube with the huge Google AdWords advertising inventory.

Online publishers and independent video producers can rejoice as they gain another method of making money online, and it’s easy to use too.

The new Google Video Units are a new monetization option immediately available to AdSense publishers located in North America and with a web site in English. The Video Units configuration and activation can be accessed inside the AdSense Setup tab within your AdSense account.

As an online publisher you can customize the look and feel of the “video units” and select specific video content by letting Google match your page content, by keywords and categories you can select or even by specific YouTube authors.

The new “video units” ad player features the ability for the viewer to scroll and browse through several video clips as well as to move through different ads just like Google allows you to do inside your Gmail inbox.

The ads can be displayed both above and below the video and their format includes both text as well as full graphic banners.

The Official Google Blog Announcement

“Nowadays, website publishers realize that getting people to visit your website is only half of the equation. Growing your audience is important, but keeping your audience engaged and staying on your site longer is just as important, if not more so.

Video units enable AdSense publishers to display videos from several YouTube content partners. The video units are ad-supported, and the ads are relevant to both the video and the site content.

AdSense publishers can now enhance their sites with interesting videos, YouTube content partners benefit from a new distribution channel, advertisers have a new vehicle to distribute their messages to their target audiences, and people can tune in to interesting videos on sites they normally visit.“

Source: Google Official Blog

It must be indeed emphasized that both AdSense publishers and YouTube content partners will receive a share of the ad revenue, so “video units” are a very interesting monetization opportunity both for online web site publishers but also, if not more for independent video producers.

AdSense Video Units – What are They?

Google-YouTube “video units” are a nothing else but a new great way to enrich your site with video content that not only provides a more engaging and rewarding experience to your readers but that also provides a new monetization opportunity for any qualifying AdSense registered online publisher.

”

AdSense isn’t just for ads anymore; it’s also a place to get video content for your site — and earn extra revenue at the same time.

Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your site.

You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your site content.“

Google “video units” provide you with quality video content, that you can target, filter and focus on the topic and themes that are of interest to your readers inside an easy-to-use embeddable, customizable video player.

You, as “video units” publisher can choose the video content you want to publish in several different ways and impressions and revenue statistics from your “video units” will be displayed separately from other statistics on your personal AdSense reports page. 

For video units, Google will specifically show clicks, impressions, clickthrough rate, eCPM, and earnings.

If you’re not already an AdSense publisher you can easily sign up now and start displaying video units on your pages in a matter of minutes.

Unfortunately non-US publishers located outside of the US or having sites in languages other than English are at the moment excluded from this new monetization opportunity, though this will be made available to them at a later, yet unspecified time.

How Does It Work?

If you’re ready to get started now, sign in to your AdSense account and head for the AdSense Setup tab. Click the video units link and you’ll be on your way to setting up your first video unit.

Here’s a quick video tutorial:

How Do I Get Started?

To place video units on your site, here the specific steps you need to take.

1. Sign in to your AdSense account.

2. Go to the AdSense Setup tab and select the “video units” link.

3. Review and check off the Terms and Conditions box.

4. Click the Visit AdSense “video units” button that will take you to YouTube.

5. Link your AdSense account with your preferred YouTube account.

6. Go back to the AdSense Setup tab, select “video units” among the products and click the Visit AdSense Video units button.

7. Select now the newly displayed option to create a new AdSense player. Give your player a name and description so that you can come back and edit it in the future.

8. Pick a color theme. (You can change the colors in the future within your account without needing to update your code.)

9. Pick a layout. (Beware: layouts can’t be updated; if you will need to change a layout in the future, Google will force you to create a new video unit from scratch).

10. Choose the type of video content you want to display: by content categories, by individual content providers, or by automatically targeting your site content. The cool thing here is that you can also provide keyword hints to assist automatic video content targeting.

11. Click the Generate code button, then copy and paste the code into into the HTML code of your site.

Done.

According to Google, once you publish your site to the web, targeted videos should begin appearing right away.

Ad Types

Each video unit can display two types of ads:

a) Companion ads, which appear in the player above the video content, and

b) Text overlay ads, which are displayed in the bottom 20% of the video content display area as the video is being played.

The ads displayed can be either contextually targeted or site-targeted, and may be paid on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impressions basis.

But what do “video units” look like?

There are several different formats to choose from, but each one displays a video screen and player controls that your visitors can use to navigate through the video.

Here’s an example:

Video Content Selection

For you, as an online publisher there are three different ways to choose video content to use in “video units“:

a) Selecting individual content providers.
YouTube partners who have chosen to distribute their videos to publisher websites along with targeted ads

b) Selecting content categories.
Topics and themes of video content you’d like to show on your site

c) Automatic targeting.
The video content you display will be automatically targeted to the content of your site. You can assist the targeting by providing relevant keywords.

Please note that presently, Google allows web publishers to display just one video unit per page and just as with other AdSense products, you can block specific specific ads from appearing in your video units by adding them to your Competitive Ad Filter list.

Monetization – How Does It Work?

When you place a video unit on your website, you’ll earn revenue from two types of ad formats: companion ads, which sit above your video content within the player and can be either text or image-based, and text overlay ads, which appear in the bottom 20% of the video content area.

Ads on video units can be paid on either a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impression basis.

Learn more

Meet the Google Video Units team

Google Video Units

AdSense Video Units – FAQ

Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media and entitled “Video Advertising And Monetization: Google Launches AdSense-YouTube Video Units” on Oct 9 2007. Some Rights Reserved.

Wordpress has slowly but surely become the standard blogging platform on the Internet, with seemingly everyone and their mother being able to use the simple and intuitive interface.

Video bloggers haven’t been ignored either, as Wordpress has quite a few solutions for that style of posting if you are willing to dig around a bit.

Revver’s recent foray into WP plugins covers pretty much everything you might need to get started. The latest instalment of the Tubetorial 7 Must Have Killer Plugins For Wordpress series covers getting this installed and what it can do for you.

Very Cool Features

While Revver isn’t my favourite video platform they have certainly added some very cool features since I last checked in on them, and hats must be duly taken off to them for being the first of the video bunch to create their own wordpress plugin. Smart move.

The plugin basically lets you search for, upload, post, track and check in on the revenues for a video right from your WP backend, further adding the capability for your viewers to leave video responses right from your blog, which is a pretty awesome set of features and goes way beyond anything else available at the time of writing this. 

While there might be some nice plugins and hacks out there that will do this stuff if cobbled together, Revver have come up with the goods in a single, nicely integrated little tool.

Wordpress Video Blogging Tutorial

Originally written by Michael Pick, a professional screencaster, web video maker and blogger. Some Rights Reserved.

Despite the mild and in some places sycophantic praise being bandied around, in my opinion the first episode royally sucked.

Why?

For me, Rocketboom has long been the Boing Boing of Internet TV/Web Video/call it what you will. And Rocketboom has perfected the format, fine tuning it to a veritable art form. 

In comparison, Boing Boing TV feels like a weak latecomer to the game. It’s a shame the partnership between the two never came off.

Soulless First Episode

Everything about the first episode felt utterly wrong. From the utterly wooden, soulless, pseudo-spunky delivery of Mark Frauenfelder and Xeni Jardin, down to the nauseating red swirling cloud background straight out of After Effects 101.

What works so well on the “pages” of Boing Boing felt for me like something being read off the pages in the video version. Boing Boing the blog manages to walk that trashy, irony-fueled perhaps somewhat nineties path with gusto, and pulls it off. 

On video it simply comes across as smug, heartless, cynically knocked together, predictable, and… Ok, I just didn’t enjoy it.

Great Blogger = Great Presenter?… No

We’ve seen this before. Watch, for example, Loren Feldman’s hilarious response to Om Malik’s web TV venture. What makes for a great blogger doesn’t always add up to a great presenter.

But as Boing Boing is totally personality driven, it never should have been like this.

Still, if you’ve ever seen a film directed by Stephen King, or witnessed Iggy Pop trying to act it becomes apparent that what utterly rocks in one medium doesn’t translate so well to another. At least not with the same person or people behind it.

It Could Improve

I haven’t written the show off yet – Cory Doctorow could well save the day, and once Xeni and Mark take the ventriloquist’s hand out of their asses, relax and get comfortable with being talking heads it might just work.

I wanted to like this, I really did. But it’s a competitive game this web trivia business, and if Boing Boing TV wants to compete with the hordes of video savvy websters they need to up their game. 

With that said, as they are Technorati’s number two blog they will doubtless get a huge following anyway, and I will be branded a heretic by the three people that read my blog. So there you go.

Go on, treat yourself:

Oh, and if you’d like to see some creative use of retro stock footage, rather than this sub-Mystery Science Theater 3000 drivel, check out the excellent mashup artistry that is Next To Heaven.It could have been so beautiful. *Sigh*

Originally written by Michael Pick, a professional screencaster, web video maker and blogger. Some Rights Reserved.

The site, an attempt to create a Funny or Die-style comedy video destination, was so painfully lame — despite the estimated $20-million that went into setting it up and getting various artists to create content for it.

For this reason, I thought it would be better to euthanize it, and put it out of its (and our) misery.

That was my first reaction. But Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee has managed to convince me that BudTV should live on to fight another day.

Why It Should Stick Around

He makes a number of points, including the fact that Bud has spent a bunch of money on the site, and should give it a little longer to find its feet.

He also notes that people criticize large companies for not experimenting enough, taking risks, etc., and that we should cut BudTV some slack.

Good points, Chris. I’m going to give BudTV another chance. But at this point, they still mostly suck.

Written by Mathew Ingram, a technology journalist. Catch his views on the intersection between media and the web at MathewIngram.com. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.

And now it’s getting the chop… so let’s have another party.

I don’t want to spend a huge amount of time on it, because frankly it isn’t worth it, but I thought I should take note of the fact that it’s gone, and about time too.

A Steady Decline In Traffic

According to an internal memo from CanWest, its new part-owner:

“When the site first launched back in March, initial traffic surged, but then declined and over the past quarter we’ve seen a steady decline, indicating that high usage is not likely.

Moreover, the site has not produced the sales interest we expected, and as such we felt that winding the site down was the most fiscally responsible option.”

In other words, it tanked. I don’t want to be accused of saying “I told you so,” but well… I told you so. 

It was Never Going To Work

Before the site was even out of beta, it seemed clear to me that it wasn’t going to work — primarily because it was restricted to Canadians only (in part because of a licensing agreement with the Israeli company that developed the platform).

As much as spokespeople for BlogTV and Alliance tried to argue (which they did in the comments on my original post) that the restrictions were a feature rather than a bug, and that Canadians wanted a kind of playpen/ghetto where they could share with other Canadians, that just never proved to be the case.

Written by Mathew Ingram, a technology journalist. Catch his views on the intersection between media and the web at MathewIngram.com. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.

It was all over Techmeme for days, as everyone pored over her blog posts and comments by Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron.

For those who have forgotten, Amanda co-created or co-owned or was hired to front (depending on whom you believe) Rocketboom before leaving over a row with Baron.

Now, there are reports that she has parted company with ABC — where she was doing occasional video reports — and there has been barely a peep. Why? Hard to say, really. 

More To Do With Rocketboom Than Her

I think that the attention she got when she left had a lot to do with Rocketboom, and what her acrimonious departure said about it as a new media venture (hint: don’t give the talent 49 per cent of the venture unless you really mean it). 

The fact that she could go from a video-blog to a major TV network also said something about old media turning to new media for talent, which is something everyone loves.

So why the lack of interest now? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that one of the reasons is that she just isn’t very good.

She was quirky and refreshing in a way when she was on a show filmed in some guy’s basement (and yes, she has a couple of prominent assets as a video-blogger), but on TV she is just… well, irritating. 

That hasn’t stopped other people from a successful TV career, but most of them have had actual talent to fall back on.

Written by Mathew Ingram, a technology journalist. Catch his views on the intersection between media and the web at MathewIngram.com. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.